Utility lines, such as lines for telephones, electricity distribution, natural gas, cable television, fiber optics, Internet, traffic lights, street lights, storm drains, water mains, and wastewater pipes, are often located underground. Utility lines are referred to as “buried assets” herein. Consequently, before excavation occurs in an area, especially an urban area, an excavator is typically required to clear excavation activities with the proper authorities. The clearance procedure usually requires that the excavator contact a central authority (such as “One Call”, “811” and “Call Before You Dig,” which are well known in the art) which, in turn, sends a notification to the appropriate utility companies. Subsequently, each utility company must perform a buried asset detection procedure, which includes having a field technician visit the proposed excavation site, so as to detect the relevant buried assets and physically mark the position of the buried asset using temporary paint or flags. Usually, a technician visiting a proposed excavation site utilizes a device known as a conventional locator—a commercial, off-the-shelf, utility locator that detects and identifies buried assets using radio frequency and/or magnetic sensors. Upon completion of this procedure by the appropriate utility companies, excavation can occur with the security that buried assets will not be damaged.
During the excavation process, excavators must have accurate information regarding the location of buried assets, so as to avoid incursions into the buried assets with heavy equipment. When utility lines are inadvertently cut during excavation, the result can be disastrous and very costly. As such, in areas where space is at a minimum, such as dense urban areas, the accuracy of the position data of the buried assets becomes even more important. Excavators base their decisions regarding how and where to excavate, on the buried asset position data. Today, however, there is little data provided about buried assets, other than paint markers on the ground, or flags placed at various points along the route of the buried asset. Excavators make excavation decisions based on this scant data, which leaves much to be desired.
Furthermore, utility companies are faced with increasing requests to locate and mark the position of their buried assets to avoid damage from third party excavators, contractors and underground horizontal boring operations. When a utility company receives a notification from the central authority, the utility company must decide whether to: a) dispatch a field technician to physically locate and mark out the buried asset, or b) respond back to the central authority that the utility company is “not involved” and close the ticket, which normally occurs when the proposed excavation area is not within the proximity of a buried asset. Utility companies can lose considerable time and substantial capital by unnecessarily dispatching field technicians to perform locates and mark outs when the proposed excavation area is not within the proximity of a buried asset. These false dispatches can be due to inaccurate map records or unknown buried asset position relative to the proposed excavation or boring zone.
Therefore, a need exists for improvements over the prior art, and more particularly for more efficient methods and systems for logging the location of buried assets and for determining when a site visit by a field technician is required, with respect to a proposed excavation site.